Comments on: Seven reasons NOT to be an engineer

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:21:27 +0000

While I wholeheartly agree with the bulk of you article, you overlook one positive in the otherwise sordid world of engineering:

Once the crap hits the fan and society descends into a chaos of race and food riots (oh yes! It will happen!), then those people who can actually do something useful will be the survivors.

By: chewearn

chewearn — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:31:12 +0000

As a billionaire industrialist, he was able to create the cool Iron Man suit. Didn’t matter that he invented the suit himself, he could easily employed some geeks to make it for him. But of course, the story would not be as interesting. By making him a genius inventor, they spiced up his character with a “dark side”.

Really, we just have to disagree on this one.

By: Awesomeo

Awesomeo — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:46:16 +0000

No i think hes an engineer not just a guy with awesome technical expertise. Isn’t an industrialist more of a business man. He wouldn’t have come up with all his great inventions if he was just a businessman. It seems like he gets more of a kick out of building stuff and learning how stuff works. To quote again from wikipedia:

A boy genius, he enters MIT at the age of 15 to study electrical engineering and computer science.

I don’t really see how engineer puts a dark spin in the story.

And didn’t batman get his gadgets made by some other guy. I’m not sure but i think i remember in the dark night, was it morgan freemans character designed and built all his gadgets and suits.

By: chewearn

chewearn — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:38:24 +0000

I would say that Iron Man is foremost an Industrialist, who just happened to have awesome technical expertise. If you want to split semantics, Bruce Wayne could be said to be an engineer as well, inventing all sorts of nifty Batman gadgets.

But in Hollywood, you have to be “billiionaire” first to be cool. The “engineer” part is added in to put a dark spin to the story.

By: Awesomeo

Awesomeo — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:02:09 +0000

“Reason 6: Engineers are unappreciated by Hollywood

Did you catch this year’s summer blockbusters? Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4, The Chronicles of Narnia 2, Sex and the City The Movie, The Incredible Hulk 2, The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2, The X-Files, etc. What did these movies have in common? The heroes were not engineers.”

Ironman is an engineer. To quote from wikipedia:
A billionaire playboy, industrialist and ingenious engineer

Engineers are awesome!!!

By: chewearn

chewearn — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:11:13 +0000

hi whitenoiz
Thank you for reading and leaving a long comment. Very sad about your personal experience.

By: whitenoiz

whitenoiz — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:59:28 +0000

Couldnt agree more with you…
I was in aerospace engineering for a total of forty years, until a new management think tank realised that permanent engineering staff were a luxury they could no longer afford; that our skills and more importantly our experience meant little or nothing in the long term scheme of things. A lot of specialisttools are involved in aircraft engineering, tools whichrequire regular inspection and calibration toensure the safety of the appliances upon whichthey are used. So they have a definite shelf life, after which they must be replaced, just like the engineers that use them. When replacement becomes due, it becomes an accountants decision as to whehter the replacement will be permitted.

You dont actually say it in your post, so I will. To an accountant in this business there are just two listings, ASSETS and LIABILITIES. Guess whats at the top of the Liabilties list… Engineers.

For various reasons, not least of which was a serious disagreement between myself and our accountants, my life was made pretty intolerable, and despite the fifteen years of experience I was eventually forced into the position of having to take voluntary redundancy and early retirement. The payoff was set at the UK governments minimum guaranteed figure and amounted to three months pay…

Three months pay for fifteen years of working all the hours God sent to make sure that the company could meet it its contractual obligations.

Fifteen years of working in steadily deteriorating conditions.

Fifteen years of coming up with original ideas to make the aircraft downtime as short as possible.

Engineers in this business are like Doctors and Nurses; if they f*ck up the patient dies…

You might like to consider that the next time your flight is delayed! The pressure on the engineers in these circumstances is incredible; but are their efforts appreciated? Not by the passengers, not by management, and not by the airport authorities if the aircraft happens to be at a boarding gate.

Engineers are indeed scum… but despite this I’m proud of the efforts I made.

Just for the record there can be no such thing as a Software Engineer; call them whatever you like but they are not, by definition, Engineers. At best they are Technicians. If they were engineers, they would be accountable for their actions. Microsoft have a lot of these non-engineers, and just look at the garbage they have produced over the years…

Just my thoughts on the subject…

By: chewearn

chewearn — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:01:29 +0000

Thanks for your comment, you are the first! I am starting to despair nobody is reading my blog. lol.

I was recently made redundant in my job. So while trying to be humorous, the post was probably sarcastic and whiney instead.

But your remark on office politics gave me an idea for another post… thanks!

By: Chip

Chip — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:44:30 +0000

Not to mention the painful office politics. Dilbert was sugar coated…

I do mean to thank you for your ubuntu post of

apt-get install build-essential

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A linux with an initially crippled compiler, what will they think of next?
Cheer,
Chip